“On the nights they went to bed at the same time, Rocco would lie there and watch her go to the closet, watch her choose either silky slips or mannish shirts, like running up sex flags from across t...”

“Rocco was gripped with the panic he often experienced around her, around himself. He seemed to be both here now and simultaneously five years in the future looking back at this moment, at the loss ...”

“His voice was languidly dense, as if he was a little slow on the uptake, but Strike knew that tone came from the man's feeling of complete control.”

“Strike said "Huh" again, thinking about betrayal, about how everything and everybody were just so much smoke.”

“Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.”

“Once in jail or you just go in prison for a reason you don't have rights... So be wise, think twice and don't go there!”

“The satyagrahi enters the jail cell as the bridegroom enters the bridal chamber”

“We are all so guilty at the way we have allowed the world around us to become more ugly and tasteless every year that we surrender to terror and steep ourselves in it.”

“Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion”

“All others are outside myself;I lock my door and bar them outThe turmoil, tedium, gad-about.I lock my door upon myself,And bar them out; but who shall wallSelf from myself, most loathed of all?If I...”